THE AMERICAN JOURNEY IS ALWAYS A QUEST FOR IDENTITY AND AN ESCAPE FROM Essay

THE AMERICAN JOURNEY IS ALWAYS A QUEST FOR IDENTITY AND AN ESCAPE FROM REALITY. WITH reference book TO TWO TEXT, THE GREAT GATSBY BY - Essay ExampleThe tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers has just happened and the shock to the main characters is still palpable. Both books comment little on the political and economic events surrounding the story, but think instead on how these matters affect a small plectrum of main characters. Material prosperity is an accepted norm in the two books Situated at the nerve center of Gatsbys story is the meta archives central to American culture--the deeply conservative ideology of capitalism, the story of rags to riches, of power, love and fame achieved through private wealth. (Giltrow and Stouck 1997, p. 477) The shady main character Jay Gatsby reflects on all that the city offers For a while these reveries provided an go forthlet for his imaging they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the r ock of the world was founded securely on a fairys wing. (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, pp. 95-96) Descriptions of the furnishings and clothing of the main characters show a lingering fascination with the glitter and wealth I (= Nick) bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and specie like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 10) Her (= Daisys) porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine (Scott Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 142) and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie, hurried in. (Scott Fitzgerlald, 1990, p. 81) This brightness contrasts sharply with the atmosphere at the end of the unused when Myrtle has been killed and Gatsby in any case is dead Wilsons glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small blue-eyed(a) clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. (Scott Fitzgerals, 1990, p. 1 52-153). The events in the book run a journey from a glitzy American dreamworld to a nightm atomic number 18 of death and destruction. The falling colourise dust of the twin towers is where Delillos characters begin their particular journeys. In the broken, fragmented environment of post 9/11 New York, successful lawyer Keith is disoriented. He is lost, and his lifes journey has been savagely interrupted. He needs to re-orient himself and embark on a new and very different kind of journey. Critics point out the post-modern irony of this, as centre of world trade and finance shifts from being the last centurys American dream, where streets are paved with gold, to the nightmare of death and destruction in the new century. The journey that battalion now undertake is not from rural poverty to urban wealth and sophistication, but something far deeper. The focus now is on characters who struggle to embark on an introspective process to recover their traumatized selves. (Schmeck and Sch weighauser 2010, p. 49). It has been noted also that while Delillos view of New York society has a certain bias the dominant narrative focus is on the white upper-middle class (Pohlmann, 2010, p. 53), there is also at least some approach to portray alternative views of the world, in the depiction of Hammad and his religious zeal against empty materialism. Though the contexts of the two novels are different, and they start at different points, their